By Ashley Sanford*
Flipped classroom teaching is a new and much-hyped concept in education. It should not be considered as a substitute to a teacher but also a helpful tool to enhance the teaching-learning process and make it effective. This teaching method provides a new platform for both the teachers and students to bring more engagement in studies, in the classroom.
With the help of this interactive method, students learn all the basics at home and become ready for efficient participation in class and therefore, study more effectively than ever. So, if you are interested in turning your class into a flipped classroom, take a look at the following 5 most commonly used tools below:
- 1. VoiceThread It is one of the best tools for making mini-lectures interesting and fun. Teachers can create narrated slide shows for delivering the lecture and use images and different kinds of media to grab the attention of students. It also provides opportunities for students to interact by adding comments to the slide shows.
- 2. Wikispaces It is a free web tool that is designed to provide individuals, particularly students to share their thoughts, work, and edit work with others. With Wikispaces, teachers can create accounts for their students in bulk for free. Wikispaces is now being used around the world by teachers to enhance learning among their students. It can be used for:
- 3. Poll Everywhere It is a great tool to be used in a flipped classroom as it helps students to gather feedback by and from other students regarding any important assignment or academic activity. The scope of this tool is not just limited to the classroom but extends to conferences as well where instant feedback or opinion is needed. This tool gives control in the hands of students and enables them to stay up to date with important work at school.
- 4. FlipGrid FlipGrid is a free tool that lets teachers create questions and make links for grid. With the motto 'relax and discuss' this tool allows students and teachers to hold an interactive learning session. It is very easy to use; just a two-minute tutorial on the page easily guides students about the entire process. Its colorful and initiative design gives a pleasant learning experience to students and enables them to learn quick brainstorming. The 90-second response helps students learn to formulate distilled ideas efficiently while considering alternative views and ideas submitted by other class fellows simultaneously.
- 5. Edmodo Edmodo is the most popular tool used by teachers, students, and parents around the world for a great communication and learning experience. It is by far the best tool for injecting life into dull and boring old curriculums. It helps students develop the habit of taking initiatives. The option of creating a co-classroom (joint learning venture with students from around the world) enables students to learn from each other, and diversity of ideas makes their thinking process efficient and productive.
- Comprehensive exercises like online short questions and answers
- Language, grammar and vocabulary exercises
- Feedback and correction of wrong answers given by students
The unique feature that makes this tool popular among the masses is that it enables teachers to interact with students and their parents simultaneously. Teachers can update class schedules, lectures, assignment due dates, coursework details and make other important announcements easily without inviting each and every parent to school.
(*) Ashley Sanford is an editor and Quality assurance manager who supervises dissertation writers from Peak Dissertation. You can follow her on Twitter.
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